When should I repaint? Is a popular question that a lot of people will find themselves asking when they own a home.

Below are some tips you may find helpful when inspecting your homes paint condition, and can help you in making your decision to help you keep you home looking good.

Let’s start with the condition of the exterior siding and trim.

If your homes exterior is peeling, or faded you pretty much know that it is time to call a paint contractor, but if you look at your house and it’s hard to see very much damage, decay , and other such problems the question is harder to answer - making it even more important to have someone that really knows what to look for .

When your house was first built, the builder most likely sprayed one coat of paint on the exterior. This is usually because most of the building materials come with a primer already on the siding and trim,thats only there to keep the lumber from twisting and warping as it sits in the lumber yard. This saves the builder some money, but does not do you very much good.

That said, within six years you will need to repaint your house. The siding will not show as much peeling as the trim, so if you don’t at least paint the trim in the first six years the trim will start to decay. The problem with just painting the trim is you still have to get a ladder and go all around the house and paint. For the average home it can be as much as 40% of the cost of a total repaint, so unless you have a lot of time on your hands, you will get a bigger bang for your buck to go ahead and have a qualified house painter repaint your home.

I had a house built a few years ago and within first three years I repainted it. This was much easier at this time because the house was still in good shape, and that made the prep work go way faster.

After painting the house, it looked much better because I painted it before it really needed a lot of patching and the boards had not become too rough from damage.Every day that you hold off without repainting your home means that you will be spending more time doing prep work.

Prep work is the biggest part of total price of repainting, and also the most work.

Modern building materials do not hold up as good as the solid wood construction we had up until the sixties.Materials such as T-111 and the new pre- primed spruce wood trims that you see on most new houses need a constant paint barrier from the weather or there will be too much swelling and contraction in the wood which leads to breaking the paint coating.

Long story short is that painting your house at the right time is very important if you want to keep your house looking young. It's almost impossible to bring that youthfull look back if you wait too late too long.

I don’t know about you, but I enjoy coming home to a house that is in good shape.

I see homes every day that are just wasting away because the homeowner doesn’t realize the point when it’s getting too late to repaint.